Ecclesiastes 5:8 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Bible Comments

Here is an account of another vanity, and a sovereign antidote against it. Marvel not, as if it were inconsistent with God's wisdom, and justice, and truth to suffer such disorders, or a just cause for any man to throw off that fear and service of God which I have now commended to thee. He that is higher than the highest, the most high God, who is infinitely above the greatest of men, and therefore, if he saw meet, could crush them in an instant, regardeth, not like an idle spectator, but like a judge, who diligently observes and records all these miscarriages, and will so effectually punish them, that neither they shall have any cause of triumph in their former successes, nor good men to be grieved at the remembrance of them. There be higher than they; either,

1. The high and holy angels, who are employed by God in the government of kings and kingdoms, as we read in the Book of Daniel, and elsewhere, and for the defence of God's people, Psalms 34:7, Psalms 91:11 Hebrews 1:14. Or,

2. God; and so it is an emphatical repetition of the same thing, which is frequent in Scripture; there is a higher than they. Or, as the words are by others fitly rendered, the Most High (for plural words are oft understood of God singularly) is above them, and therefore can control them, and will certainly call them to an account.

Ecclesiastes 5:8

8 If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they.